Heartbrokenwife, I can relate so much.
Keep venting, keep talking, write it out, scream it out.
I am a lot like you in the sense that I live the affair most of the day, my thoughts are consumed by it, I explain it to my H as wash, rinse, repeat... all damn day some times at the end of the night i literally feel I may get sick.
It is like my brain has to find all of the horrible things he did and re think and relive them and it is like that ring just will not close in my brain. I am hoping EMDR will help soon but EMDR also scares tf out of me so im dipping my toes in.
I get about 3 goodish hours in the AM, MOST days and during that time the affair slowly creeps in to my thoughts and then when it hits me all over again I spiral the rest of the day.
My H always wore his ring and didn't take it off even during the A ... he doesn't wear that one anymore he wears a rubber one because I couldn't handle him wearing that ring anymore knowing it touched her nasty ass.
My H also used the same analogy yours did. "I didn't throw you away or the kids away, I never intended to leave."
That didn't last long , he only said that maybe once and if he ever said it again I would boot his ass out.
I don't care what their logic is they chose to throw us away when they made the decision to cheat, they betrayed us, their vows, their morals, their children and at that point they chose divorce without actually saying it. After I explained to my H that he NEVER said it again, all we were to him at that time was trash.
Reconciliation is a gift and if it wasn't for us trying to heal and forgive and keep our families together then IT WOULD have equated to them throwing us away forever, instead we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off and are finding our worth after our spouses shattered us.
I can add to the venting :)
My H now is the BEST dad , hitting golf clubs with our kids in the back yard, being more patient, talking about signing them up for extra things such as dance and gymnastics. He looks at them with the eyes a dad should always look at his kids with, the eyes of pure love and admiration, the look of "I will lay my life down for you forever".
He never did that, he always considered our kids as "Getting in his way of his own dreams"
The fact he was ever capable of not thinking his kids were the best thing in life still gets me sick, it does him too of course butttttttttt how could he ever have been that selfish?
Looking back I see that he cared more about how others made him feel vs me bringing FOUR beautiful children into this world, what kind of person did I marry?
I watch him play with the kids now and it should make me happy but sometimes it just makes me sad, they always deserved to be the stars in his sky and sadly , they weren't. He is making so much progress and hes discovering what love is but it took this for that to happen?
He tells me that although he isn't happy he did what he did , it changed him and made him realize he needed to grow up and change his ways, get counseling, find God .... etc.
Thanks for killing me on the way to self discovery bro.